In Uncommon Company
Twenty-Second Day of the Twelfth Month 292 AC
Rather than speak in the saddle, you had chosen to take a small break for lunch by the banks of a small nameless stream bubbling between mossy banks as it meanders its way westwards towards the Sunset See. The trees grow tall here just as they have in other parts of the True North you had seen, but there are fewer evergreens and more hardy broad-leaves, more to house squirrels and chirping songbirds, their voices a welcome reminder that these lonely lands are not just places of savagery and danger, but also of unexpected beauty, a welcome respite from the rush of the journey south.
"...so having set off from the Deep, leaving it in as good an order as can be in such a short notice, we headed as we had been bid to stand against the evils stirring there."
"On the word of a cat?" For once the disbelief is tinged with humor rather than horror.
"A spirit of older days in the shape of one, and once a sorcerer's familiar," Dany interjects. "That he spoke truth all the magics we could bring to bear agreed, and the threat he spoke of was dire."
"Do either of you have... er... familiars?" your mother asks with an air you remember from your childhood, when you had once taken a few months' fondness with a hawk you saw once upon the hunt, and precious little notion of how such a thing should be cared for.
You explain that your familiar is a small snake that found you soon after your magic quickened but she is busy laying a clutch of eggs, forbearing to mention the blessings upon them.
"Mine can be a little startling..." Dany warns. "Not truly frightening, but
strange."
"I'm as ready as I am ever likely to get," your mother replies, eyeing her warily.
To your relief Feeder's ungainly appearance in flight together with his dogged insistence that he is a dragon draws out a smile. If anything this should have been your mother's introduction to the notion that things that are not and never have been men might speak as they do. It also gets you past the delicate matter of Dany carrying a dagger, seeing as the weapon is in fact a 'pet.' Dany must have coached him rather well in what he can and cannot say, for the little dragon-kin mentions nothing of how they met save that he is the last of an ancient race and had been drawn to one who bears the blood of the dragon as like is called to like.
"I will allow that the talking cat is probably as good a source of lore as any, then. Continue," she bids you.
Forbearing to mention Relath or the tritons for the moment, much less your first brush with the Deep Ones, you speak directly of your coming to Volantis the Great. "The blood of Valyria runs deep in its first Daughter, if not always in the ways that one might prefer, and magic had begun to awaken there to trouble the magisters."
The tale of the burning plague, while gruesome in its substance, has the marked advantage of being able to truthfully say that you where half a continent away when it happened unlike so many other magical calamities you will have to go over eventually. Further as you explain the workings of the Mysterium and how the mighty of Volantis reacted to such power in the hands of slaves, you can set as contrast your own notions of accountability and respect given to those who would wield such powers. Still such matters are framed as musings amid travelers' tales of seeing the wonders of the east. Several times you even go so far as to conjure a particular vista from memory.
"Alas Volantis itself had also left itself open to dark things that wish only ill to humankind by the manner in which it raised up some to be as kings and princes and trod others into the dirt. Even as we stepped upon the scene two factions sought to re-enter the ruined manse from which the burning times begun. The first to approach us was a woman who claimed to serve the Red God and served instead... well ultimately I cannot speak of what she served here."
"So far to the east?" your mother gasps.
"Tis said the Long Night covered the wold from Westeros to Yi Ti," Dany reminds her somberly. "Darkness knows not the borders that men draw between themselves."
Of your battle with the false priestess you speak little, and of the disastrous attempt at resurrection not at all, but then you come at last to your meeting with the Flame Keeper Benerro, self-professed slave to R'hllor the Red, a good man by your measure and... worker of miracles.
"So he was a sorcerer, like you?" You might cheer for the fact that she barely hesitated before the last words, save for the fact that the time has come to broach a delicate matter.
"No, mother," Dany replies. "He prays to the Red God and something grants him the power to work his magics, so do many of his order in these days of rising magic. This does not mean that among their number one cannot find fools and madmen. It bespeaks of power, not wisdom or the holding of some great truth."
"So a demon, then?" the question is rather faint.
"As I said, he seemed a kind man to me and wise after his own lights," you reply. "I do not think he would serve any sort of fiend."
"So the Red God is...
true?" Disbelief is too small a word for what you hear in her voice. She sounds as one adrift.
What do you answer?
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OOC: Best not to think of the fact that Feeder is part of a predominantly CE species of gruesome parasites. That is one thing Dany for one intends to never tell Rhaella.
